BLACKPOOL Preview

It’s 5 years since we returned home from Wembley, our dreams shattered, hearts broken, pride dented, despondent, wretched, sick as the proverbial parrot after the play-off final defeat against Ollie’s Tangerines. To throw one of his quotes back at Mr Holloway “Every dog has its day, and today is woof day! Today I just want to bark!”. Well things didn’t quite work out for the old dog or his team after their one shot at the big time and after a succession of imprudent managerial appointments made by a despised owner with the unhappy tendency to take aim at his own pedal extremities a once proud club is now in free fall. Any bells ringing?

It’s reasonable to feel dispirited in the wake of a such a fateful defeat in 2010 but I can’t honestly recall feeling so deflated before a game. A season that began with the realistic prospect of challenging for an early return to the top flight quickly imploded under Solskjaer’s brief and bewildered cameo role. Looking as lost and panicked as a chief mourner leading a cortege into the wrong funeral parlour his subsequent replacement by Slade was as effective as changing the pall bearers on the inexorable procession to mediocrity. 

The appointment of Slade last October was accompanied by the sound of jaws dropping and heads being scratched as bemused Bluebirds wondered ‘just who is Russell Slade?’ Six months on we’re none the wiser so I took the initiative to try to get behind the enigmatic pot-bellied inveterate trainer-gazer for a Q & A session I call ‘Slade Uncapped.’ I caught up with him at the Hadfield Rd branch of B&Q where he was being introduced as the new face of Armitage Shanks.

Name: Russell Marmaduke St John Slade

Marital Status: Very much so

Children: Russell Junior and Leonard Nimoy Slade

Hobbies: Needlepoint and Extreme Draughts

Tiswas or Swap Shop?: It’s the man Edmonds every time for me. Consummate family entertainer. Lovely hair.

Noakes or Purves?: Ooh tricky one. More of a Lesley Judd man myself. Did you know she was once married to Derek Fowlds who used to play the straight man to Basil Brush? Boom! Boom! Ha-ha! No. Really. Loved Noakes for all his madcap nuttiness but if pushed it’s got to be The Purves for me. Lovely hair. Lustrous. Very Pat Jennings.

Marilyn or Diana?: Ah, Some Like It Hot. Bracknell Boys. Christmas 1974. Read for the Tony Curtis part but my long blond curls got me the Marilyn gig. Fell across my shoulders like a Nun’s veil. (Stares into the middle distance…) But, no. The Princess of Hearts it is. Still have the commemorative Royal Engagement mug. Keep my toothbrush in it. Like to ponder her gorgeousness as I complete my morning ablutions. 

Who will be getting your vote in the forthcoming General Election?: Well I’m a natural Conservative. Staunch. But I’m considering going over to the UKIPs. Too many foreigners in the game. No regards for our traditions. Three at the back? Diamond formation? Total football? What is THAT? Wenger, Mourinho, Pellegrini. Spoiling our game with their fancy tactics and their…hair.

And with that he was gone, a man out of time, cap pulled down and collar raised against the cruel winds of change, contemplating the fateful tarmacadam as he prepared for the most anti-climactic futile fixture in modern times against already relegated Blackpool, a game he was to describe in his press conference as ‘a difficult game and we have to be up for that and we will be up for that’. Eh?

Match Report to follow...